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Changes needed to guard badmintonís appeal

The Star online

Monday December 19, 2011Comment by RAJES PAUL

IT was a delightful sight, a few brightly lit Christmas trees with colourful stars and ornaments welcoming the season of goodwill in the winter of Liuzhou even as the curtain came down on a great badminton feast.

The city had successfully hosted the Super Series Masters Finals - a fitting end to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) calendar.

As promised, the finale of the 12-leg Tour had the world’s top players presenting the fans with some exciting and explosive fare to keep the adrenalin rushing throughout the five-day competition.

The Liuzhou fans were well behaved and showed that they were there for their love of badminton, no matter who was on court.

Denmark’s women doubles shuttlers Christinna Pedersen and Kam-illa Rytter Juhl even threw their racquets to the crowd during the group matches in appreciation of their sporting behaviour and warmth.

Badminton fans elsewhere have not been all that blessed this year. They have been shortchanged in several Super Series events following a spate of late withdrawals and walkovers - especially in crucial all-China ties. There have also been hushed whispers of match fixing, something totally alien to the sport, until now.

In the Singapore Open, four-time world champion Lin Dan was booed for conceding a walkover to Chen Jin in the final. There were several other last minute walkovers involving other China stars as well.

The BWF, aware of the situation, even formed a panel to investigate the matter and some measures were spelt out quite clearly.

For now, though, it has been all talk and no action.

There are several other issues that BWF must look into again to preserve the integrity of the game. The quality of line judging remains a highly contentious matter as are the need for more professional team managers’ meetings and proper scheduling information.

Even Lin Dan has called for the hawk-eye technology, like the one used in tennis, to improve the standard of line judging.

Many also feel that the prize money for the Tour finale should be much higher than that offered in the Premier Series. BWF’s grand finals only offers US$500,000 when South Korea and Indonesia boast purses of US$1.2mil and US$600,000 respectively.

Money should not be an issue as sponsors Osim have provided a huge financial lift to the world body.

Something in the region of US$2mil would have the players fighting tooth-and-nail in every tournament to make sure they become one of the top eight qualifiers for the Masters Finals.

Now, that would be something that even Lin Dan would not want to miss.

BWF’s chief operating officer (CEO) Thomas Lund, the former Danish player, gave an assurance that the world body was doing its best to further lift the profile of the game.
Of course, there are limitations, but it is good to know that they are willing to embrace change.

In fact, in the recently concluded Masters Finals, BWF managed to quickly amend a rule whereby they gave more world ranking points for the third place finishers in the group to make it more competitive. Previously, the last two players in the group earned the same points.

There have been other innovations too, like setting up a new BWF official Chinese website, live streaming and the use of other social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

There is also a new site, Shuttle Time, a cyber resource centre that provides training programmes for teachers and coaches to develop skills and deliver fun badminton for children.

BWF are also taking measures to ensure that the sport remains in the Olympic Games programme by reaching out to the mass.

BWF must remain vigilant and adaptable to change if they are to prevent the game from losing its appeal and popularity.

Hopefully, when the new season starts with the South Korea Open from Jan 3-8, it will be the beginning of a year that will take badminton to greater heights.

It seems like a fairly extraneous article that is used to show how physically attractive Carola Bott, and that she plays badminton as well. But I also recognized it as an attempt by Badzine to promote the sport in.... "other" ways. It's kind of interesting because not only is she a prospect of Germany's new generation of female badminton players, she's a medical student as well. There are plenty of women in Tennis that the media gives attention to for their looks but not so many in badminton. Perhaps she is going to be the Maria Sharapova or Anna Kournikova of Badminton?

Forgive me if this all sounded sexist. It's sad, but some of the appeal of professional sports come from the media attention athletes get, whether it for their skills or their looks. For the general population who are new to the sport, looks are usually one of the main attractions, literally.

LCW made $267,350 in US dollars for 2011 in prize money. That's a pretty low number when you look at a lot of other sports and what professional athletes make playing those. I've looked through a lot of the tennis players in top 100 ranking and almost everyone within the top hundred makes more than LCW does. That means for a lot of the people ranked 75-100, just showing up at a tournament, losing many of them in the first round with maybe a handful of those reaching the 2nd or 3rd round, earns you more than the top badminton player who won numerous tournaments this year. Only those ranked 100-120 in tennis made equal or less than LCW. The disparity of earnings, which people have discussed many times before, is massive.

It's just another thing against badminton prospectives: you're not going to be rich going professional.

I've talked about this matter before in my comparisons of Tennis and Badminton in various aspects of the game. I noticed an article recently from Badzine that was caught my eye.

It seems like a fairly extraneous article that is used to show how physically attractive Carola Bott, and that she plays badminton as well. But I also recognized it as an attempt by Badzine to promote the sport in.... "other" ways. It's kind of interesting because not only is she a prospect of Germany's new generation of female badminton players, she's a medical student as well. There are plenty of women in Tennis that the media gives attention to for their looks but not so many in badminton. Perhaps she is going to be the Maria Sharapova or Anna Kournikova of Badminton?

Forgive me if this all sounded sexist. It's sad, but some of the appeal of professional sports come from the media attention athletes get, whether it for their skills or their looks. For the general population who are new to the sport, looks are usually one of the main attractions, literally.

First of all it's is not Bott, secondly the shoot was not done for Badzine at all and thirdly it is pretty sad Badzine has no ideas for content whatsoever lately and has to resort to digging up months old content from their sister site to show some glamour shots of someone barely on the radar internationally after having mocked the BWF skirt rule themselves earlier this year (in principal rightly so of course).

"All the attention of the German media" ? Or the attention of the only badminton medium in Germany ? Certainly not any mainstream media; and as reported on said German sister site: tv coverage in Europe is practically non existent despite the positive numbers presented by BWF, boosted only by Asian growth in coverage. Even with back-to-back World Championships held in Europe, coverage of even that event alone was practically non-existent with the usual exception of Denmark and occasionaly UK and now France.

Then again Solibad (or should we say Badzine) has done a sexy calendar photoshoot themselves and I don't recall any of those pics making it to the Badzine portal ... and that one included much more recognizable names. So were they really trying to "promote" badminton or simply ran out of thoughts & material and borrowed the next best thing to newsworthy content (oggleworthy pics)?

Since the main tv coverage is in Asia BWF should focus on maximizing and capitalising the $$$ potential over there with the current stars. Once the money is there I'm sure it will trickle down into (the) other regions since I don't think badminton has much to offer big corporations in the west (football/soccer is much more popular in Asia) right now. If there is a next Sharapova or Kournikova in badminton she should come from Asia (and they haven't exactly come close to being medical students )